


A Funny Thing Happened on the Way Back to Skyhold

by Fairfaxleasee



Series: Cullen/Lyta [5]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Late Night Conversations, Minor The Iron Bull/Dorian Pavus, Stripping, Worry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-18 19:41:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29495220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fairfaxleasee/pseuds/Fairfaxleasee
Summary: Lyta Adaar explains to Cullen just why she was so late getting back to Skyhold.
Relationships: Female Adaar/Cullen Rutherford, Female Inquisitor/Cullen Rutherford, Inquisitor/Cullen Rutherford
Series: Cullen/Lyta [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2141982
Kudos: 10





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to @blondetexan and @xqueen0fhellx for betaing.

Cullen heard the door to his office open and clenched his jaw as he threw down his quill.

_ Is there NO ONE in this entire organization who can solve their own blighted problems? _

“What is it  _ this time _ , Lieutenant? And so help me, if this is another so-called emergency like the tavern needing an extra delivery of ale-” He raised his eyes to glare at the intruder, but the large blue-grey eyes widened with surprise at his tone that met his were the last ones he’d expected them to be. Even if they were the ones he’d been waiting hours to see. “Lyta! I - Maker’s breath, I’m sorry.” He shook his head; he really needed to get better about checking who was in the office before he vented his frustrations. Although at least he hadn’t accidentally thrown anything in the general direction of her head this time. 

“I - I can leave if you want me to.” Lyta was shifting her gaze between him and the floor.

“No! I just,” he sighed and started walking over to her. “I thought you were someone else.”

“A Lieutenant who’s looking at a week in the stocks?” She half-smiled and reached out her hand to him.

He clasped it once it was in reach and kept walking to her until he was close enough to reach his other hand around her back and rest his head just above her breasts; a definite advantage to having a Qunari girlfriend. “Ha! If I started putting people in the stocks every time they bothered me over something trivial, you wouldn’t have an army.”

Her free hand was in his hair, pulling individual curls straight before they slipped from between her fingers. “You know I don’t want an army in the first place, right?”

“Hm.” Whether or not Lyta wanted an army was immaterial; as the Inquisitor, she had one, and she needed one. And while Cullen knew Lyta didn’t have any more interest in being Inquisitor than she did in having an army, he was the one who made sure it happened - another thing she needed for her own protection, even if he hoped he’d never have to tell her why. He reached up to touch her cheek. While there were advantages to having a Qunari girlfriend, the fact that when she was standing her lips were totally out of his reach wasn’t one of them. Fortunately she recognized the request in the gesture and leaned down so they could kiss. “Do you want to go up to the loft?”

“That depends, what do you want to  _ do _ in the loft?”

“Make up for lost time? You were due back  _ hours _ ago, schnecke.”

“Mm, and don’t I know it.” She was running a finger along his neck, “Unfortunately that’s also why I’m not really up to doing much.”

Cullen pulled himself away from her and began to examine her for any sign of injury. If she hadn’t changed he’d be able to see any cuts or tears in her cloth armor, “Lyta,  _ please _ tell me you didn’t come straight here instead of going to the healer again! You know you scare me half to death every time you do that!” Lyta may be a mage but she was hopeless with Creation magic. She was hopeless with most disciplines except for Force and Spirit, although she did seem to have a knack for her Knight-Enchanter training (possibly because of the years she’d spent using a scythe rather than her magic).

Lyta looked down and looked herself over, “I don’t  _ think _ I need to go to the Healer. I don’t think anyone hit me, but I admit I’m trying  _ very _ hard to forget about most of the evening.”

“Look, just - come over here and tell me what happened. I’ll help you get the armor off and we can see if we need to call a healer.” Cullen directed her towards his desk. Once she was closer to the candles he could tell she was looking paler than usual and there were circles under her eyes, and those beautiful blue-grey orbs weren’t shining like they usually did. He pushed her shoulders to get her to sit on the desk and moved the strands of her deep brown hair that had come loose from the ribbon she used to tie most of her wavy locks back out of her face. “Lyta, if you keep coming back looking like this, I’m going to start stationing a healer at the gates so you won’t be able to come here before seeing one.”

“Oh, sure; fob me off on someone else rather than coming with me yourself, I see how it is.” She was trying to make it sound like a joke but couldn’t keep the dejection completely out of her voice.

He reached behind her head and brought their foreheads together. “ _ I wish I could _ . I hate seeing you leave, schnecke, even if I do love-”

She tapped her head on his, “Please don’t finish that thought. I’ve had quite enough male shenanigans for at least the evening, if not the entire  _ month _ .”

He leaned away from her and they started unbuckling her armor. “Maker, this is going to be painful, isn’t it?”

She shook her head and fixed her mouth into a grimace as she rolled her eyes, “Excruciating, but at least you didn’t have to sit there and watch it happen.” She turned to look at him and her expression softened. He smiled at her before his eyes began to wander over her skin as they removed her armor, looking for any injury she may have forgotten about. She sighed and began, “So we went to try to hear more about this Warden fugitive or defector or whatever it is he is…”

Cullen shook his head, “Who exactly Loghain MacTir is depends an awful lot on who you ask, and sometimes who’s around to listen - King Alistair has two completely different answers depending on whether he thinks the Queen might hear him and neither one of them is anywhere close to hers.”

“That seems to be a pattern with your countrymen, Cullen. It sounds an awful lot like The Champion.”

“Oh, no. There’s only one answer to who the Ice Queen is: very, very dangerous if she decides she doesn’t like you. Or is annoyed at you. Or invites you to dinner.”

She raised a brow at him, “‘Ice Queen?’ Seriously, Cullen?”

He shook his head, “Look, just don’t tell her I call her that, or that constantly angry elf of hers when he turns up looking for her; she hates the name and remember what I said about her being dangerous if she’s annoyed at you?”

“If she’s so dangerous why did Varric invite her here?”

“Because she’s dangerous. And she may get annoyed with me, but she’s absolutely furious with Corypheus. And as bad as she is if you’re on her bad side, there’s no one better if you’re working against someone who’s on her bad side.”

“Really? No one?”

He caught her eyes again and smiled, “You don’t have a bad side, schnecke. You have an ‘I don’t like you just at the moment because you were mean to an animal’ side. But I’d rather have you on my side than her any day.”

“Good. I was getting worried you forgot that.”

“Never.” He looked at Lyta sitting on his desk. She was naked from the waist up now, pale silver skin glistening in the candlelight, breasts rising and falling with her breath. He wanted to take her on the desk right now before taking her up to his loft where the mattress would let them use positions she found uncomfortable on the desk, but as very, very tempting as she was, exhaustion still lined her face and he still didn’t know why. He took her foot in one hand and rubbed the other along her calf before he began to unlace her boot, “But you were going to tell me about what happened tonight.”

She rolled her eyes to the ceiling and shook her head, “Ugh, right. So we were trying to find this Loghain person and came up totally empty, not entirely surprising, Crestwood’s a big place. But on the way back, Dorian spots this tavern-”

Cullen winced.

Lyta saw it and laughed, “Yeah, pretty much, right? Anyway, Dorian spots this tavern and starts in about how he doesn’t want the trip to be a total waste, so he wants to use the opportunity to drink Bull under the table.”

He interrupted her, “Wait; you’re saying that  _ Dorian _ , the idiotic Tevinter who lurks in the library and keeps stealing your cat to try and find dates, thought he was going to drink  _ Bull _ , the Qunari mercenary who swings axes that probably weigh more than my armor, under the table?”

“That’s what he said.”

“How?”

“No fucking clue. Unfortunately, Bull decided he wanted to see the ‘lightweight’ try; and said he’d give him a handicap - drink three shots for every one of Dorian’s. So I tell them, ‘No, absolutely not, that’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard in my life and we’re going back to Skyhold right now.’ They don’t even respond, just walk right into the tavern.”

“If either of them are still alive I’m going to murder them. Unless this story gets worse in which case I’m going to tie them up and tell the Ice Queen  _ exactly _ where to find them.”

“Well, I don’t know how much worse it gets, I think the result is pretty obvious.”

“The Tevinter fop ends up passed out on the floor and Bull carries him back?”

“Oh, no. Not obvious at all, I guess. No, they  _ BOTH _ end up passed out on the floor and  _ I’ve _ got to figure out a way to get them back.”

“Please tell me you left them there and came back without them.”

“I was tempted to, but the tavern keeper made it fairly clear  _ that _ wasn’t an option - good news though, the Inquisition is banned from that tavern for a month and Dorian and Bull are both banned for life.”

Cullen pressed a hand to his temple and shook his head, “But you left with them and Varric, right? How did the two of you drag those useless idiots back here?”

Lyta opened her hand and used her magic to pull the inkwell on Cullen’s desk into it.

“You used Force magic to get them all the way back here?” He couldn’t decide whether he was more angry that Bull and Dorian and put Lyta in a position where she’d have to exhaust herself like that or more worried that she had exhausted herself rather than just leaving them in a ditch.

“I’m not sure how else Varric and I could have managed it.”

“How far did you have to drag them?”

“I don’t know, I think like three miles maybe?”

He put her hands on her shoulders, “Lyta, wait here; I’m going to ask Varric exactly where Hawke is and have her take care of this.”

She grabbed the fur jerkin over his armor, “Don’t do that. I may have dropped them a few times on the way. And not lifted them  _ entirely _ off the ground most of the rest of the way. And threw them in the courtyard as soon as I got them through the gate. And told the gate guard nobody was to help them or move them.”

“Well, it’s a start I suppose. And I guess dawn tomorrow is a perfectly good time to have the recruits do drills in the courtyard.”

“If you want to be doing drills at dawn in the courtyard, you’re on your own. And for right now, I’m cold and I want to go to bed.”

She was completely naked now. And aside from having to waste all her energy on a couple of morons who would pay, none the worse for her trip to Crestwood. He put his hand on her side and rubbed it back and forth over her hip, “Should I warm you up first?”

“That depends, if you want to come up with me and get under the covers so you can lend me your body heat, then yes; if you have absolutely any other idea about how you’d warm me up, then no.”

“Well,” he squeezed her hip before letting her go, “I’m not going to pretend I didn’t have a few other ways to warm you up in mind, but I suppose if we get to bed now, I can just start the drills  _ before _ dawn.”

She leaned over and pressed a soft kiss to his cheek. “That sounds like an excellent plan. Just make sure you don’t use everything up on those drills, I’ll probably be cold by the time you’re done from being up in that loft by myself and we can try one of your ways to warm me up.” She got off the desk and reached for the ladder to the loft. She climbed a few rungs before she turned and looked down at him “So? Aren’t you coming?”

He grinned up at her as he sat back in his chair and put his feet on the desk, “In a minute, schnecke.”

She shook her head and continued up the ladder. Knowing she was going to his bed just made watching her leave all the more enjoyable.


	2. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little drabble of the morning's training session.

Cullen gazed down at the two men passed out before him. He couldn’t see them very well, it _was_ before dawn after all, but The Iron Bull was unmistakable even in the dim light - and if Bull was still passed out in the courtyard Cullen was willing to assume Dorian had spent the night there too and was the smaller, snoring lump at his feet - no one in the Inquisition particularly feared Lyta’s wrath, but most of the scouts and soldiers _did_ fear his (even if that fear never seemed to stick once he was done shouting at them) and after Lyta had gone to the loft he’d made it _very_ clear to the guard that Bull and Dorian were expected to be present at the early morning drills Cullen was about to begin.

There were a few general murmurs of discontent at the earliness of the hour for these drills. Cullen was somewhat sympathetic, the soldiers weren’t the intended targets of this exercise, but he had a vague thought that _maybe_ just _maybe_ some of the more annoying scouts would learn to think before they bothered him if they realized he was prepared to wake an entire regiment up to prove a point to a couple of morons.

Cullen waited until it sounded like everyone had filed into place. He clasped his hands behind his back and shouted to the assembled crowd, “Alright, soldiers! For this morning’s drills we’re going to work on blocking. You should all have a shield, and you should all have a mace. Pair off and get to it. DO NOT STOP until I tell you to. Is that clear?”

“Sir, yes sir!” the cry was a bit lacking in enthusiasm but Cullen was willing to let it slide. Voices weren’t the noises he was interested in just at the moment.

“Then begin!”

The clang of metal on metal resounded in the courtyard, echoing in the otherwise silent air. Cullen paced and corrected where he saw errors, but he made sure to keep the bodies in sight. And within earshot.

It took longer than Cullen initially suspected it would before he saw some movement and heard the groans. They must have been even more drunk than he’d thought - which was surprising but not at _all_ disappointing. After a few minutes of dull mutterings, Dorian managed to ask, “Dear Maker, what _is_ that infernal racket?”

Bull rolled over to stick his face in the dirt and replied, “Other than you yammering, I don't know…”

Dorian used a hand to block the few rays of the sun that were creeping in over Skyhold’s battlements, “I don't remember doing anything to deserve this kind of gastly treatment! Is this some sort of Southern hospitality joke?”

Bull reached out and after a few tries managed to close his hand over Dorian’s mouth, “Your whining isn’t making this any better, Vint! And as for deserving this, I don't know what you get up to when I'm unconscious but I KNOW I didn't do anything to deserve this…”

Dorian was muttering something and trying to push Bull’s hand away, Cullen doubted they were going to remember why this was happening without being prodded and he didn’t want them wandering away before he was done with them. He shouted at the crowd, “KEEP THAT PATTERN UP!” then marched over to the men responsible for all this. He addressed them, “So. Neither of you remember doing ANYTHING that warrants this?”

Dorian (unfortunately) finally managed to shake himself loose from Bull’s grip and tried to plant a winning smile on his face (Cullen grinned at the fact that a combination of the racket the soldiers were making and Dorian’s _extremely_ well-deserved hangover made it more of a wince) and turned to address him, “Commander, I know you crave out attention but, no. We did nothing wrong. I am as innocent as an innocent Chantry mouse.”

“Alright. Bull, do you have anything to add?” Cullen shifted his gaze slightly.

“No,” the reply was muffled by the ground. “Well, I doubt the Vint’s ever been innocent but I definitely am!”

Cullen exhaled through his nose and laughed. He tossed them each a shield and mace. “Fine. You get to join them now. You want to sleep where we train, you get to train too.”

Dorian held the shield away from him with two fingers and looked at it in disgust, “We'll just see what Adaar has…”

Bull lifted his head out of the dirt as realization dawned on his face, “Oh, fuck. That was last night, wasn't it?”

Cullen grabbed one of Dorian’s arms to force him to his feet as he prodded Bull with the point of his boot, “Yes it was. Now on your feet. And no one stops until I say they can, is that clear?”

“Commander, if we sincerely apologize and promise to reflect and regret our actions, is there any way you’d be willing to let us off with a warning?” Dorian really needed to stop trying to be charming.

Cullen pushed him into line with the troops, “Well, you’re going to apologize, and regret your actions, but no. I’m not letting you off with a warning.”

“You know, this is much more fun when _I’m_ the one running the punishment drills…” Bull got into line beside Dorian without further complaint.

Dorian turned to Cullen horrified, “ _Commander_ , it’s bad enough you’re making me use these…” he shook the shield and mace Cullen had forced on him, “ _barbarous things_ but you can’t honestly expect me to train with _him_!” Dorian pointed up at Bull.

“What’s the matter, Vint? Scared I’ll scar that pretty little face of yours?”

“Yes. Greatly.” Dorian turned back to Cullen pleadingly.

“Well, Dorian, I suppose I’ll let you choose: do you want to train with Bull, or do you want to train with me?”

Dorian huffed a breath through his nose and turned to Bull, “Just so you know, if that thing of yours gets _anywhere_ near my face, I will _never_ forgive you!”

Bull grinned but Cullen cut him off before he could respond - they were being punished, they could carry on with whatever they got up to on their own time. “Pavus, if you have time to whine, you’re not training right! Now, start working and I’m not letting either of you stop until I’m convinced you can actually use that shield.”

“I don’t like you _at all_ , Commander!” Dorian muttered.

“I’m sorry, Dorian? What was that? You want to go for a five mile run after you finish?”

Dorian glared but turned to face Bull who laughed and shook his head, “Get ready, Vint. I’m not holding back.”

“Why am _I_ getting the worst of this punishment?”

“Because it was your stupid idea in the first place!” Cullen and Bull shouted in unison.

“I… well… yes… fine. Let’s just… get this over with.”

If the way Dorian was holding his shield was any indication, he and Bull weren’t getting dismissed any time soon.


End file.
